Giants out of the running

A 5-1 loss to defending champions Ramblers of Auckland yesterday eliminated Giants from contention for the quarter-finals at the New Zealand men's inter-club softball championships being played at Petone this week.
The top two teams from each of the four pools qualify for the quarters and yesterday's defeat, which came on the back of a massive 10-0 victory over Albion of Christchurch, has Giants trailing unbeaten Auckland Marist and Ramblers going into the last round of pool games today. There Giants will play Marist which with the maximum eight points are already guaranteed a quarter-finals berth while Ramblers meet bottom placed Otahuhu and Cardinals play meet Albion.
Even if the unlikely happened and Giants beat Marist and Otahuhu shocked Ramblers the latter would edge Giants out of the quarters on the countback because of their win in yesterday's game.
Assistant coach Russell Thompson said Giants had created a number of scoring opportunities against Ramblers but had failed to convert all but one into runs on the board.
"We simply didn't get bat to ball often enough when we had runners on base and you have to give the Ramblers pitching staff credit for that,"Thompson said. "Whenever we looked to have them under pressure they responded well."
Thompson also paid tribute to the batting strength of a Ramblers team containing a number of past and present Black Sox players. "They made the important hits and in the end that was really the main difference between the two sides,"he said.
Earlier in the day Giants had chalked up their second pool victory with a 10-0 thumping of Albion of Christchurch in a game highlighted by the home runs to Mark Quinn and the Karaitiana brothers, Justin and Corie.
Thompson said the final scoreline was a fair indication of the merits of the two sides.